Cheni introduces himself and explains his insight into the small business process.  His office space has seen 6,000 companies from a unique perspective. He gets to see to see companies before they’re in a position that even VC’s will ever see.  At the point a VC gets involved the company has success.  Sunshine helps these companies achieve that success.

Cheni takes some time to examine how has the office evolved. After WWII, there was a strong corporate unity. The goal of students at the time was to achieve high paying, “successful”  jobs such as becoming a lawyer, doctor, etc.  These careers come with a tremendous trade off.  The bring in plenty of money, but don’t give you any time to enjoy it.  At this point in history, entrepreneurship wasn’t a common notion.  At this point in history, your office space was determined by your position on the corporate ladder.  The higher you were on the food chain, the more impressive the office space you worked in. For example, if you were high on the ladder you would receive the benefits of a windowed office.  Going higher than that could result in a corner window office.  However, at the end of the day you were still spending 8+ hours at this office and the highlight of your day consisted of conversations around the water cooler discussing soap operas.

Enter the economic downturn.  As corporate revenues begin to drop they begin to seek cheaper sources of labor.  Most corporations in this position relocated countless jobs overseas, resulting in a heavy blow to the overall US workforce.  Enter the vision of entrepreneurship.

Cheni describes entrepreneurs as “alphas.”  These individuals have the ability to take who they are and create a brand new start for themselves if need be. If someone is in a bad predicament, they can exercise their ability to leave that situation and start fresh from scratch.  The key to this process is convincing yourself that you CAN accomplish what you are setting out to do.

Cheni takes a moment to describe a job he held at the Hyatt hotel. He maintained the job for 2 years but wasn’t satisfied with the monotony of the daily agenda.  He proceeded to leave and start his own venture.  Certainly, some ventures were more successful than others and he admits that the first one didn’t work out as projected.  Cheni emphasized that these failures need to be acknowledged, analyzed to determine what went wrong, and learned from.  New York City is a place with tremendous opportunity and if something doesn’t immediately work out, gears can be shifted a lot more rapidly than in a rural environment.

A primary talking point becomes the importance of interaction.  Cheni discusses how tremendous social media has become and how many new opportunities it can help erupt since it simplifies the communication process.  However, nothing in the world has, can, or ever will replace face-to-face human interaction.  That being said, if an entrepreneur decides to leave their home to move into an office space alone, how is this any different from working from home?  The same can be said about the notion of working and running a company from a coffee shop like Starbucks.  ”People are there to drink coffee and unwind, not hear your ideas,” Cheni explains.  A much more ideal environment would be where entrepreneurs could network and exchange ideas, as well as services, with other entrepreneurs.  It was on this concept that Sunshine Suites was formed.

At this time, Cheni begins to provide insight into how Sunshine was physically started.  Himself, along with his partner Joe Raby, leased some office space, ran all the wiring, painted the walls, etc. in hopes that if they could provide a solution to the aforementioned dilemma, people would want in.  Moving forward with the goals of changing the focus of office space from where you’re located in the office, to what the office can provide YOU has helped them attract initial tenants.

Ten years and over 6,000 companies later Cheni realized that clear patterns emerge in successful small businesses.  He spent the remainder of the talk outlining some of these patterns that he oversaw.  In addition, he gave insight into a lot of his thought process when making decisions about his own company.

Start a company, at the end. “When you start a company, the first question you need to ask yourself is ‘where and when does this end?’” Cheni insisted that without determining a clear ending, planning any other time frame for the company would become exceedingly difficult, if at all possible.

Choosing a partner: When choosing a partner, find someone who has strengths in places where you have weaknesses.  Play off of each other’s talents and this can help facilitate a powerful, long term relationship.  The first step in choosing a partner would be to identify your own weaknesses.  Cheni suggests drawing out a “T Chart” that lists what strong points you have, and which you lack.

In one column, list out the crucial elements that you will need to succeed in business.  Examples include:

• Time
• Credit
• Accounting Skills
• Management Ability

In the right column, indicate whether you have the skill or not.  If you find yourself lacking more than one of the above, find a partner who is able to compensate.  However, partners can’t be selected on these criteria alone.  If this is done, the partnership will likely turn sour and end in “divorce.” An ideal partnership will include the aforementioned traits, and your partner will have the same clear vision for the future of the company that you do.

Speaking of plans, Cheni strongly encourages businesses to set goals quarterly, or in three month chunks.  This is why he feels so strongly against entrepreneurs seeking office environments that require one year minimum lease terms.  A company’s needs can and should be changing over three month periods, not one year. When setting these goals you should look at WHO the target audience is, WHAT problems do they face, HOW can you help solve it and WHAT is missing from the equation that needs to be addressed.

When working with goals, the two most vital resources are time and money.  The biggest goal should be to understand the VALUE of time.  If dedicating time to an issue that you’re not familiar with how to address takes too long, it may be a much better investment to dedicate financial resources to this issue.  This way, you can reach your goals on time which should be the most important aspect of the company.  Decide who in your environment can handle a task that you don’t know much about and delegate accordingly.

Tomorrow, we will post more of the content from the presentation.  Stay tuned!

This morning I had the immense pleasure of speaking on a panel of Entrepreneurs under 30 to a business management class.

Here’s some of the questions that the panel was asked. I’ll do my best to summarize the responses by the panel under each.

What is a normal workday like for you, as an entrepreneur? Do you work primarily independently or do you have many employees? How does this compare to other working experience you may have had?

The answer to this question was best answered and summarized by Russ Marshalek’s response. With a look of confusion he questioned “what’s normal?” He proceeded to explain how every day in the life of an entrepreneur is an entirely unique experience. Other panelists reflected on similar beliefs that every day is guaranteed to be different than the one before it. Of course, this could be for better or worse. 

How have you dealt with risk in your business and what are the most crucial things you have done to grow your business? How important has the business plan been in dealing with risk and growing your business?

Most members of the panel had started their businesses at very young ages alongside school. The reasoning behind this being if the venture doesn’t work out, school will still be there. This notion of minimizing risk and ensuring a back up plan is in place stayed with these entrepreneurs to date and they still apply this methodology in their businesses.

What do you think are the greatest opportunities today for students starting out to become entrepreneurs? In the fast paced world that we live in today, how important has technology and the internet been in assisting your business?

All of the panelists businesses had some focus on utilizing technology and the internet to accomplish a goal. The panelists emphasized how the technology is so rapidly advancing that applying it in new and creative ways can help build businesses. At the same time they noted that the internet can tremendously help networking efforts which are so crucial to helping businesses grow.

What 3 pieces of advice do you think are most important for entrepreneurs starting out today?

Responses included:

Surround yourself with an extremely wide array of people from all walks of life and different educational backgrounds to get all different perspectives on a situation. You never know when one of these resources may come in handy. Of course, surrounding yourself with other individuals from different business backgrounds can be a vital resource to any small business and would be suggested. (This is why so many companies who find shared office space in NY can succeed.)

If entrepreneurship isn’t working out at first, but you’re determined to make it work, just be patient. There’s no shortage of hardships you will endure as an entrepreneur, especially one that’s just starting out. Truthfully, if you can’t manage sticking out difficulties like start-up growing pains, being an entrepreneur probably won’t work out overall since the hardships don’t disappear any time after the initial start-up ones.

The panel was an absolute blast and the students were tremendously grateful.

Being self employed is a desire by many hard working individuals.  You can set your own hours, determine how much you are going to make and basically be in control of your work future. Though being self employed is a great way to take control of your work, it poses a few challenges when it comes to balancing the difference between work and home life, especially for those working out of their homes.  So how do you manage?

Setting Hours

Often when individuals are self employed they tend to forget that they still need to set hours for working.  As a self employed individual you are in charge of your own hours, but also making sure you meet those hours.  When you first decide to work from home, look at your family schedule and sit down to plan what hours you will actually work.  This could be while the children are at school, when the kids take their nap or go down for the night, or even a set number of hours each day.  Having set business hours are also important in the event you deal with customers.  That way your customers know what hours they can reach you and what hours your “business” is down.  Just remember that the hours you set should be hours you follow just as if you were working a regular job.

Creating a Workspace

If you work from home, a workspace is necessary for maintaining the “work” environment out of your home. Whether it is a desk in your living room or an office within your house, create a workspace with a desk and all of the supplies you would need in order to get your job done.  This should be the place you show up for the day and do your work and it should be maintained just like you would if you were working in a real office.  Separate any work items from personal items on your computer and if possible, try purchasing a computer that is used solely for your business.

Avoid Mixing Business and Personal

When you work from home it is very easy to let your personal life sink into your business.  This can be simple distractions like taking care of the children or even the simple distraction of knowing that you do not have a boss to report to, so why not watch a little television instead?  Try utilizing production tools and exercises that help you maintain your productivity, while also working out of your home.  When you are working, do not do any household chores or duties that are not work related.  This includes running errands or even emptying the dishwasher.

Treat Your Job Like It’s Not at Home

When individuals work from home they find that they are tempted to start their day in their pj’s or even workout clothes. Rather than treat your job like you are working from home, wake up in the morning and get dressed.  Show up to your home office just as you would for a job outside of your home.  Even if you only speak to customers through chat, email or over the phone, pretend like you would be meeting them in person and dress to fit the part.  By dressing for work, you can mentally prepare yourself to separate from home life and enter into work life.

Of course, the best way to separate your home and work life is to “get out of the house” as Cheni says!  Find a local shared office space in your area like we have at Sunshine NY.

For those of you who don’t know, Gary V is known for his tremendous success of taking Wine Library to the next level by making use of social media strategies, particularly video (like Wine Library TV.)  Recently, Gary has become an outspoken advocate of businesses, small and large alike, making use of social media to connect with their audiences.  In his book “Crush It!” Gary outlined a clear game plan for any person or business that wanted to step up their social media game.

In his newest book “The Thank You Economy,” Gary strongly emphasizes the crucial reasons why businesses need to live in gratitude to their customers and how to leverage social media to relay this “thank you.”  Sunshine was THRILLED to have Gary come to speak to our community of small business owners about why this is so crucial, and bestow each of us with a signed copy of the book.

The community had an absolute blast and I’m sure I speak for  every Shiner when I say that the value of hearing Gary speak in person is tremendous.

Below are some photos of the event:

Gary In Front CRUSHING It!

Gary Drawing the Audience Into His Dialogue

Shiners Cling on Gary's Words

Gary Signs for an Eager Fan.

Gary is Never Too Busy to Strike a Pose!

As a small business owner, you are at risk more than large corporations for a tax audit by the IRS.  Though this is a common practice that often turns out to be fine, many business owners will find themselves panicked at the though of reading a letter stating their business is under audit.  An audit can be a scary experience, especially for a business that is unprepared.  In the event your business is being audited, you must gather up your evidence to prove your company’s legitimacy and ensure that your company does not fall victim to any further fees.

Document Storage

Every business, big or small, should have ample document storage.  These records should be kept back up to seven years and include items such as bank statements, cancelled checks, receipts and other items used to claim both income and loss on a tax claim.  For retail business owners, the carbon copy for cash machines should always be kept in the event an investigator will need to verify daily revenue for a company.

Business Revenue

The entire purpose of an audit is to find unreported income.  This is why it is important for a small business owner to have a separate bank account than their own personal account.  This includes sole proprietor businesses too.  Any income should be deposited immediately into business bank accounts and every deposit needs to be accounted for by who it was received from, its purpose and any receipts that correlate a loss with that particular income.  An agent will usually compare reported income on your tax return with bank deposits and records.  Therefore it is important that small business owners account for every dollar deposited into their accounts.

Deductions

Often small business owners are able to deduct numerous items on their tax return, but with those deductions comes speculation and need for evidence in the event you are being audited.  In order for deductions to not be overturned by the IRS, a small business owner must prove that the item is a legitimate business expense through a bill or invoice and proof that they actually paid the invoice through credit card statements or cancelled check records.  Big deductions such as travel expenses, entertainment and even usage to an automobile are very suspicious to the IRS.  Small business owners that work from home and write off a portion of their home expenses are automatically looked at by the IRS.  When writing off expenses such as mileage, a business owner should keep a detailed auto log that can be purchased at office supply stores such as Staples or Office Depot, of the job in which the mileage was used for and the date it was used.

Employee Clarification

An area where most small business owners get into trouble is classifying their employees.  There is a 20 point test run by the IRS that every employer should use to determine whether or not their employee is an independent contractor or a real employee. For employees that are considered independent contractors, Form 1099 should be filled out properly and only when an employee meets the 20 point test to be considered an independent contractor.  Since independent contractor wages are not subject to state, local or social security tax through the employer, many small businesses have fall victim to hefty fines for classifying employees as independent contractors rather than employees.

Being listed in Google Places (also known as Google Local) can be very advantageous to acquiring new customers.   These listings appear that the top of Google results when someone in your geographic area runs a search for something you’re offering.  Right now, most of the companies listed in Places are local facilities such as dining, entertaining, lodging, etc.  However, Google has publicly announced recently that they are going to be putting more emphasis on these results as they feel they best connect searchers with what they are looking for in their area.  Because of this new emphasis, these results are taking up most of the above the fold inventory on the first page of Google results for most service / local related searches.  This means, even if your site is ranking well organically, the local results will still appear on top.  For businesses, this means one of two things: get your business listed in local so YOU appear at the top of the results, or get pushed down by these local results.

Getting situated in Google Places is probably easier than you think .   If you would like to take advantage of this listing, simply follow these steps:

Once your listing is validated, you will be able to be found when people look for your service offering and are searching from the area near your address.

On top of helping you appear on top of the listings for your local area, this will also count as an organic link from Google themselves!  This link will help your authority when trying to rank for search terms that are queried outside of your businesses immediate area.

A fun trick with Google places is to open a PO box in each of your target markets (or open a phone number in that area code.)  As long as you can leverage either of these to verify your listing, you can rank in places in several markets.

Try searching for your service from different areas to see how you are ranking in that area.  Use proxies or a VPN to change where Google sees you are searching from.

This is a continuation in our series on small business SEO.

We’ve discussed keywords and how to build content around them but as previously mentioned, this is only one piece of the puzzle. The second, equally important piece, is building links back to your site.

Google’s search algorithm is designed to compute the diffusion of authority from one site to another.  The more trusted a given site is, the more authority it has to offer to anyone it links to.  Authority is determined by a few different factors:

1. What is the intention of the site? If the goal of the site is to provide quality, unique, relevant information on a topic, it will get priority over a site that has commercial intentions.  However, there are gray areas in that zone.  For example, Wikipedia’s goal is solely to provide information with zero commercial intentions.  However a site like Ezine Articles has every intention of providing quality information BUT subsidizes their content with advertising.
2. How trusted is the source of content? Sites that are published by reputable universities, or by the government themselves are automatically seen to have authority.  These sites domain names will end with a .edu for a school or a .gov for a government web page.  Other sites that have a large amount of authority are sites published by reputable, well accepted news organizations.
3. How many pages on the internet link to the site? Of course, the whole purpose of this post is to discuss this in particular.  The more pages that link to a site, especially pages with authority, the more trusted the site becomes..
4. Does the site have an editorial process for content published there? The rule of the thumb is that if a site has an editorial process to keep “junk” content off of the site, it will have more authority.  This may or my not be because Google specifically gives it more trust out of the gate, but rather because it will often have the exact type of content that Google is looking for.  For example, Wikipedia accepts content from anyone who submits it, but it can be edited out by the community very rapidly if it doesn’t meet a certain criteria of quality.  Another example is sites like article directories such as Ezine Articles.  For your article to get published on this site it has to be manually reviewed by a human reviewer for quality.  As a final example, media outlets have a rigorous editorial process compared to the aforementioned outlets.  For this reason, content posted on these sites have a mammoth amount of authority.

Methods of Building Links:

1. Use blogs to your advantage! First of all, if your company doesn’t have a blog up, start one.  That being said, find relevant blogs in your niche.  Write up a guest post that you think would be beneficial to their audience.  Send them the guest post and offer to let them post it if they have a day where they need content to post up.  Just make sure that in your article, normally in the “about the author” area, you are linking back to your site.  Go ahead and link back with one of your target keywords as an anchor text.  Another great way to use blogs to your advantage is by following several blogs in your industry.  As the authors publish posts, go ahead and comment on their post leaving your URL in the URL field.   Blogs are seen by the search engine as a content source and that means these are somewhat authoritative links.
2. Distribute content! Write up some articles about a hot topic in your industry.  Submit these (one to each) to large, high authority, article directories.  Examples include Ezine Articles, Buzzle and GoArticles. Content is not limited to text.  You can make a podcast and submit it to several podcast directories or apply this concept to any other medium.
3. Join forums! Sign up for the large forums in your industry.  On your profile for the forum, write a little about yourself and what you do using your target anchor text to link back to your site.  Also, put a link in your forum signature with your anchor text linking back.  What this will do is insert this link below every single post you make on the forum.  By just taking part in every day conversation on these forums you are not only gaining exposure for yourself and your brand, but this will create links to your site.
4. Press releases work WONDERS! Remember what we said about how powerful links from the media are?  These aren’t as hard to obtain as you would imagine.  Simply creating writing a press release and dropping it onto PR Newswire will get it immediately picked up by SEVERAL media outlets who automatically post content from this wire.  This means very powerful authority links for your site.  Power does come with a price though.  For example, one agency charges $550 to write a press release and distribute it onto the eReleases newswire.  However, this is a small price to pay for droves of these high authority links.

Now you have the opportunity to build your business smarter and faster than ever before!

Announcing FREE consulting support from MBA students and faculty!

Sunshine Suites has forged a new partnership program with Baruch College that can benefit your business in a big way.

We are seeking 40 to 50 Shiners to receive 30 days of FREE intensive, hands-on consulting from a carefully chosen team of MBA students at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.  All work will be supervised by faculty members of the college.

The students, many of whom are working towards a Masters Degree in entrepreneurship, are currently employed by or have held positions at top-tier financial services and technology companies.  They have expertise in areas ranging from finance and accounting to sales, marketing, business development, IT, operations and logistics.

To participate, you will have to pinpoint an area of your business that needs improvement.  While you will not have to divulge financial records or anything you consider proprietary, you will have to specify the area in which your company has a defined problem or a distinct opportunity.  Students will select companies based upon their area of interest and aptitude.

You will need to prepare a brief for the students with an overview of your company and a description of the area in which you need consulting support.  When you enroll in the program, we will provide you with a form you can fill-in and submit.

The students will zero-in on your company’s particular issues. They will evaluate and analyze the challenges you described and propose solutions to your unique business issues.  The final deliverable will be a detailed plan to directly attack the issues you have identified.

Shiners and students will have certain obligations to one another. Keep in mind that your time, your candor and your best efforts will make this mutually beneficial.   Here’s what is expected of participants:

SHINERS:

>Prepare a brief, describing an area in which your business needs to improve

>Meet each week at a specified time with your team of students

>Be completely candid about your business, your strategy and what you want to achieve

>Provide detailed feedback and direction at each session; criticism should be instructive and well thought out

STUDENTS:

>Bring an outside perspective and working experience from other industries

>Provide focused consulting and added brainpower to your business

>Have a direct academic/financial incentive to do their best for you

You will have one week to apply.  Deadline for entry is Tues. February 15. Participants will be selected by Baruch college students and their advisors in accordance with course objectives and program requirements.

This is a pilot program.  If it is successful, we will offer it again next semester.

To enroll, please contact Russ in the Sunshine Suites office for an application form.

Email:  Russ@sunshineny.com

This is a continuation in our series on small business SEO.

Now that you have a rough idea of the keywords that you would like to rank for, it’s time to begin developing content with them.  Let’s look at some beginner notes on content creation:

On Site Text Content:

Every page on your site that is going to feature text should have a substantial amount of it for it to be considered.  Ideally, each page should have 350+ words of text content for the search engines to crawl and index.

Keyword Density:

Keyword density is one of most mentioned topic when discussing content for SEO.  Keyword density is a measure of how often your keyword is used in a given piece of text.  Several people claim to have determined a percentage that search engines look for, though none of this has been proven.  The most agreed upon factors of keyword density are:

>Don’t overuse or “stuff” your keyword into your text content.   Pages that go overboard will be penalized instead of rewarded.

>Don’t worry about any exact percentage.  Ideally, use your keyword in your titles and mention it once or twice in any given text.  Remember the reasoning behind this is just to make sure the search engines know what your site is about.  Repeating yourself over and over isn’t going to give them a clearer picture.

>Read your content aloud after writing it.  If you find yourself repeating the same words in a fashion that’s unnatural, chances are the content is too dense.  Revise the content to focus less on the keyword to improve flow.

>If you want to check what the search engines have determined your site is about, check Google Webmaster Tools for your site: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/.  Once your site is setup and crawled, login to see what keywords they have determined your site discusses.  If these are off base, revise your content to make your text better reflect your keywords.  Also, check your Google Analytics to see what searches people are performing to arrive on your site.

Blog Content:

Running a blog on your site is a great way to put yourself in front of your target audience.  Producing content for your target audience in the form of a blog creates several SEO opportunities for your site:

>When you put out great, informative content, it’s not hard to get other sites who appeal to the same audience to link to you.

>The more sites that link to you, the more authority you’re seen to have in the eyes of the search engines.

>This is an opportunity to demonstrate to the search engines that your site is not “static” but rather, “dynamic” and frequently updating.  The more frequently your site is updated, the more likely the search spiders are to crawl your site more frequently.

>Each post is another opportunity to use your keywords and keep the search engines informed of what you’re all about.